What I found very interesting about Godzilla is that he started off definitely as a metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And some of the atom bomb testing we were doing in the South Pacific in the subsequent years. The giant terrifying force of nature that comes and stomps the shit out of your city, that was Godzilla. Filtered through the very fanciful imaginations of the Japanese perception. And then he became Clifford the Big Red Dog in the subsequent films. He became the mascot of Japan, he became the protector of Japan. Another big ugly monster would show up and he would fight that monster to protect Japan. Which I never really quite understood, the shift.

What we’re trying to do with the new movie is not have it camp, not have it be campy. We’re kind of taking a cool new look at it. But with a lot of tradition in the first film. We want this to be a terrifying force of nature. And what was really cool, for me, is there was a very compelling human drama that I got to weave into it. It’s not that cliched, thinly disguised romance or bromance, or whatever. It’s different, it’s a different set of circumstances than you’re used to seeing. And that’s tremendously exciting as a writer when you’re asked to do something else.

Dan Lin and Roy Lee, along with Lee’s partner Doug Davison, filed a lawsuit against Legendary on Thursday after they were removed from the project earlier this month. The complaint filed in California Superior Court in Los Angeles claims that they were paid only $25,000 after bringing the “Godzilla” project to Legendary after being promised a much more lucrative deal for their ongoing services.

In a filing last week seeking that the dispute be sent to arbitration, Burbank-based Legendary said the trio “offered little to the ongoing production of the film.” The company decided to remove them, paying only a small “development fee.”

The lawsuit also names Legendary President Jon Jashni as a defendant, accusing him of fraud for his role in the 2010 oral agreement, including an email to Lee and Lin in which he allegedly wrote that if the duo secured the “Godzilla” rights for Legendary, “You know you and your partners will be well treated throughout.”

Instead, the complaint alleges, “Whether out of greed or to show some sort of creative dominance over cross-complainants or merely due to the whim of Legendary’s CEO Thomas Tull, Legendary decided to turn its promise that Lin, Lee and Davison would be ‘well treated throughout’ on its head.”

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At the center of the legal battle is a disagreement over what contract governs the producers’ work. In their complaint, Lin, Lee and Davison say they reached an oral agreement with Legendary that would pay them $1.3 million or 3% of the film’s gross receipts — whichever was higher — along with the $25,000 development fee. They were also to have the right to produce any sequels.

Legendary says in its complaint that the relevant agreement is a written one that its lawyers provided to the producers in 2011. That contract allows the company to remove the trio from “Godzilla” before production began with no payment beyond the development fee.

Although Lin, Lee, and Davison never signed the contract, Legendary says it is enforceable because they never objected and continued work for more than a year after it was submitted.

The written contract stipulates that any dispute would be resolved in arbitration instead of court.

Warner Bros. reportedly looked at Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Henry Cavill, Caleb Landry Jones and Scoot McNairy to play the lead role in “Godzilla,”